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6-18-2011 Safeco Field

After surviving yesterday I figured I’d come back for more. I actually didn’t have a ticket for this game but yesterday while I was waiting on friends to arrive I was complaining about how I didn’t have a ticket to Saturday’s game and I also mentioned my charity. If you want to read about my charity all you have to do is click here. Anyway. So as I was complaining a nice guy at the front of the line told me he is a season ticket holder, and he had an extra ticket for tomorrows game. I quickly asked him what he wanted for it and we agreed on $20 dollars. That’s a bargain price considering it was a premium game and all the cheap seats were sold out. Without hesitation I took the deal.

Twenty minutes before the gates opened this is the size of the crowd.

Once inside, everyone of course, was crammed onto the party deck. Toss-ups were out of the question so I immediatly left and took my spot at the stairs near the bullpen and patiently waited another 20 minutes to be allowed into the rest of the stadium. The only highlight I have to report is that Brandon League tried to hook up a fan that was calling for a baseball but missed it. I don’t know how he missed it. It was thrown right to him. If it weren’t for the huge hoards of people trying to inch their way passed everyone in line I would have stepped out of line and made the catch. But instead the guy wiffed it, and the ball ended up hitting some little girl in the side that was in front of me. She, of course, started crying. I’m not sure she was actually hurt or it just caught her off guard. And then all of a sudden some lady standing by said, “You know what? She should get that baseball.” I have mixed feelings about these kinds of situations. That’s all I’m going to say.

5:10pm. The stairs were opened up and it was a rat race for the best spot in the stadium to catch a baseball. I knew standing on the baselines wasn’t going to work for me. Even if a foul ball was hit directly to me it would be hard to catch because so many hands, kids, gloves and whatever else would be going for it. So I wandered the rows for a little while looking for any overlooked baseballs, and then I took a comfy spot behind the manual scoreboard. If anything, I’d be able to glove trick a baseball out of there if someone were to drop a toss-up or boot a catch. And it wasn’t long before that happened. A baseball came in and a fan reached out to make the catch and dropped it. Unfortunatly, the baseball landed here.

Sorry for the blurriness. That baseball was nearly impossible to get. But I did have a backup plan to get it. I’d just wait until the scorekeeper came out and I’d ask them for it. I could have tried to get it but I didn’t want to risk it falling down underneath the scoreboard. Where the ball is sitting there is a small gap where the baseballs can fit and they fall down onto some walkway.

As I was taking pictures and trying to formulate a plan to get that baseball I looked further down behind the scoreboard and I spotted another baseball. It wasn’t there before. Someone must have dropped it. I assembled my glove trick, and then arrogantly asked any other fans if they were going to attempt to get the baseball. Everyone sort of laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders and asked a fan near me if he minded that I tried. He laughed again, and asked, “Will you get kicked out if you jump down there?” It was my turn to laugh…

The baseball was positioned right at the end of that long board laying on the floor. If you didn’t read about my glove trick incident at my last game attended, you should. Click here. Today I had a new and improved glove trick. No more of this easily breakable shoe string. I had boidegradable twine! Yes folks. That’s right. Twine. It doesn’t bind up, he doesn’t knot up, and it’s strong as an ox!

Once the Phillies came onto the field I tried really hard to get Cliff Lee to toss me a baseball. Unfortunatly, when he did, a crowd of teenaged kids were in front of me and when the baseball came close enough for me to catch it, it was easily deflected off of someones’ glove. The ball fell down into the bullpen where a cop scooped it up and tossed it to the nearest kid. Boo! And remember the baseball that was sitting behind the scoreboard? Yeah, it was still there. But now I had competition. A young kid came down to wait on the ball too. Fortunatly for him, he had tickets to be seated in the left field bleachers. I didn’t. So as soon as BP ended the security guards began their search to find people without tickets that were sitting in their sections. I had limited time. And then I finally gave up on the ball. The left field seats filled up fast, I was without a ticket, and securiy was extra tight. So I let the kid have the ball. I’m not sure if he got it or not but as I left the area five minutes before the game I saw the scorekeeper behind the scoreboard. Here’s a picture of the kid waiting on the ball. Kudos to him for having patience of steel.

And here is a picture of how crowded the ‘Pen area got.

The game was awesome though. Even though the Mariners lost 5-1, Dustin Ackley hit his first Major League home run. Which was pretty cool to see. So congratulations to Dustin on his first career jack. I also saw him hit his first Major League hit the day prior.

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